Digital Twin of an Aluminum Foam
Analysis of the pore space of an open-cell aluminum foam, modeling of a digital twin based on the pore sizes, and determination of various properties.
Open-cell metallic materials, such as foams or lattice structures, are largely defined by the morphology of their pore space. An analysis of this pore space is therefore of great importance. Instead of conducting complex experiments, this can also be carried out in a 100% digital workflow in GeoDict. The basis for the three-dimensional foam model is a CT scan which was imported into GeoDict followed by segmentation. The pore space was analyzed, subsequently. Finally, the result was used to create a statistical digital twin of the foam.
This fully parametrized digital twin was then used for a digital parameter study. This allowed analyzing the influence of strut diameter on the following properties:
- permeability
- electrical conductivity
- stiffness
This workflow can be used for materials produced by a variety of manufacturing processes:
- Laser sintering
- Casting
- Foaming
- Coating PU foams with metals
What does this mean for you as a customer?
- You can analyze your open cell metallic materials in GeoDict
- You can digitally develop your material without the need to produce all variants.
- GeoDict opens up completely new possibilities for material development as well as a significant reduction in development time
Approach
First, the scan of an open cell aluminum foam was imported into GeoDict and segmentation was conducted. Subsequently, the pores were identified in GeoDict's PoroDict module using a watershed algorithm. This identification works very well, despite the cells of the foam samples being quite open. Only pores that do not intersect with the domain boundary were analyzed, since pores that are cut off at the boundary would distort the results.